SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY tions issued to the constable of Walsall borough. 89 Four sufficient house- keepers are to be appointed to keep out all strangers from entering the town unless they bring certificates that they do not come from infected places ; and ale-house keepers are to refuse all guests save under the same conditions. This was in 1637, but in 1665 the regulations are more detailed and rigorous, and are interesting as a specimen of sanitary precautions in an age not given overmuch to such things. 90 The first regulation says : That if any carrier Shall for the future desperately adventure to travel to London untill it shall please God upon the removeall or good abatement of the Sicknes wee may goe with lesse danger and more Safety, and shall presume to come home to his owne house at Walsall, that his house shall be shutt upp for the space of one month at the least. The other regulations are similar in intention, and provide for the whole body of citizens acting as special constables to keep out infected persons. The strictest prohibitions are also laid on the inhabitants as to the entertain- ment of the aforesaid carriers or any suspicious strangers, and nobody is to receve any goods or wares brought down (by the carriers) before the same have been aired by the space of one month at the least, upon the payne of having their house shutt upp and to be other wayes proceeded against as dangerous persons and contemners of authority. From a document in the Corporation Records at Stafford we learn that in 1646 there was a great visitation of the plague in that town, ' which by that meanes is now growne so poore, that unless some speedie course be taken for their relief, the meaner sort of people must of necessitie break out for want of sustenance.' 91 As for the Pottery district at this time, its area was much the same as at present, but the population was scanty, probably not more than four thousand ; and it was distributed in small hamlets and villages separated by strips of wild moorland, with two or three potworks in each village, each giving occupation to about eight persons. Sometimes the family alone were sufficient to carry on the various processes of the primitive manufacture of that day, and the women of the family usually had the task of driving the loaded and panniered asses to the distant towns where they sold their pottery, and whence they brought back food and other household necessaries on the backs of their animals. As late as 1653 Burslem is described as a mere village, with few houses and a scanty population. Hanley was still smaller, and Stoke on Trent a small aggregation of thatched houses and two potworks gathered round the ancient parish church. 92 The pottery industry had existed in some rude form in North Stafford- shire from time immemorial, but though certain advances had been made in the seventeenth century, such as the discovery that glazing could be effected by salt in 1680, the manufacture of pottery was still in a primitive stage of development, was a purely domestic industry, and was confined chiefly to the making of common vessels of everyday use. No serious general advance was made indeed until the genius and industry of Josiah Wedgwood in the eighteenth century transformed a rude and primitive industry into an elabo- rate and beautiful art, and in so doing changed the social condition of a wide district and a large population. 89 E. L. Glew, Hist, of Borough and Foreign of Walsall (1856), 119. * Ibid. 1 20. 91 J. L. Cherry, Stafford In Olden Times, 56. M Meteyard, Life of Joslab Wedgwood (1865), i, 96-9. I 289 37
